A collection of duets between Domenico Sciajno and various others (G. Coleman [bass clarinet], K. Cascone [Laptop], R. Hayward [tuba], A. Wagner [clarinet], T. Lehn [Analog Synthesizer], G. Gebbia [alto sax], Tez [Laptop]) all processed through DS’s Max/Msp setup. The results are much the same as all the other releases using this format, your enjoyment of which will depend on your own particular set of values for this sort of thing. This is pretty abstract stuff but is useful to blow out the cobwebs for those of us who are just jaded enough to be bored by whatever we’ve been listening to for so long. The last track with Tez is the standout in my opinion.

"Tidal Perspectives" unfolds like a delicate, oceanic daydream, where each ripple is a moment of collective spontaneity between three remarkable voices. Recorded in a single afternoon, this LP flows with the natural grace of tides - effortless, yet filled with hidden depths. Giovanni Di Domenico’s shimmering Rhodes piano melds with the crackling textures of Pak Yan Lau’s prepared piano and ceramic objects, while John Also Bennett’s bass flute weaves rays of sound that glide through the fog.

The quartet of tracks feels like an improvisational journey where every sonic gesture is instinctual, forming textures that evoke tidal ebbs and flows - unpredictable yet cohesive. The star track, “Tidal Perspectives,” moves with the slow, inevitable pull of ocean currents, drawing you out to a serene, abstract sea of sound. It’s a piece that teeters between clarity and uncertainty, making each note feel suspended in a world just beyond our grasp.

This trio seems to transcend the typical trappings of collaboration; they’re not just playing together but creating a new sonic language, reminiscent of Oren Ambarchi or Jim O’Rourke, where genres dissolve into the elements. Yet, there’s nothing forced here. The album’s most compelling moments arise from its unpredictability, where the listener is as much a passenger as the musicians themselves, swept along by the subtle forces at play.

In "Tidal Perspectives", music doesn’t just exist in time; it reflects the rhythms of nature, the inherent flux of things that move and change without fanfare or notice. Giovanni Di Domenico, Pak Yan Lau, and John Also Bennett have made a record that’s as fluid and imperceptible as a tide turning, one that asks to be felt as much as heard.

German experimental soundmaker and Selektion label member Ralf Wehowsky (aka RLW) is widely known for his sound-recycling activity, which has lead to monumental collaborative projects like the 5-cd set "Tulpas", where a theory of international artists re-read his music. Something similar has occurred with the recent "I. K. K. - Purpur" cd on Sirr Records: Wehowsky created some recordings using his daughter Sonja's singing of a Christmas carol, "Kinderlein Kommet", which partially ended up in a 7" released by Meeuw Muzak and were later re-used to assemble further sonic material. This was later sent to various fellow artists who re-interpreted the piece. The same basis and working method was used by RLW for this collaboration with Italian bassist, electronic musician and software-developer Domenico Sciajno, responsible for the first half of the cd. Don't be fooled by the Christmas carol thing: though you can spot some particle of child singing in the two codas, all the rest is quite a difficult journey. Both Sciajno and RLW offer free-flowing pieces where digital clicks and disturbances, droning frequencies and sharp, ear-irritating crackles form a thick fog of vaguely disquieting electroacoustic music. Let's say that, roughly, the former offers a more shifting and sparse set of sounds, while the latter opts for deeper drones, nearly silent movements and, here and there, more recognizable acoustic sources (looped and manipulated vocals, possibly a creaking door...); but the two visions of theirs intersect very well, so that the listen doesn't suffer from any abrupt change. This is surely not an easy to digest experience: both artists merge the sense of change and indeterminateness of radical improvisation with the algid results of digital electronics, coming up with an obstinately solipsistic work, which eventually grows with every listen thanks to his very uncommunicative approach.

This is a collaboration that doesn’t shout “Look what we made!” so much as whisper, “Listen to what was already there”. "Painting A Picture / Picture A Painting" is a two-track, vinyl-length whisper between two sonic artisans who’ve each spent decades crafting beauty from nuance, subtle friction, and the gentle blurring of form.

It starts with a seed: Giovanni Di Domenico, Roman-born, Brussels-based pianist with a well-worn passport of free improvisation and collaborative cross-pollination, sends Rutger Zuydervelt (known for his work as Machinefabriek) a series of live piano and Rhodes recordings. No overdubs, just fingers and keys and time. “I believe your approach to sound could match very well these tracks…” he writes. Rutger responds not with words, but with texture, deconstruction, reinterpretation. Like placing a mirror under a mirror and watching recursion bloom.

The first piece, “Painting A Picture”, lays this process bare: Giovanni’s tactile, searching performance is caressed, crumpled, and ghosted by Rutger’s subtle manipulations. It’s like watching a reflection try to remember the face it mimics - everything’s slightly off, but poetically so. The Rhodes hums like a submerged choir, while glitchy textures curl around the sustain pedal’s footprints. It’s music that exists just between now and not-quite-yet.

The second piece, “Picture A Painting”, flips the equation. Rutger sets the stage with a sonic environment conjured from echoes of the first track - and then Giovanni enters, not with dominance but with a sort of patient humility. His playing here is more restrained, almost hesitant at times, like he’s brushing pigment onto ice. Every note feels like a decision. Every silence, a brushstroke held midair. There’s a sense that the two are no longer collaborating across time and layers, but in the same room - dreaming together with different palettes.

A nod here to the cover artwork: Christiaan Kuitwaard’s painting of a blank canvas is a bold and elegant metaphor. Not emptiness, but "possibility". Fitting, too, for a label like Moving Furniture Records - a place where minimalism, drone, and silence get up, stretch, and rearrange the sonic furniture when no one’s watching.

And it’s funny - for music so abstract and gentle, "Painting A Picture / Picture A Painting" doesn’t fade into the background. It invites stillness, yes, but also attention. It’s the sound of two artists erasing the borders between composition and improvisation, piano and process, self and other. It’s like watching a duet between a painter and their memory of a painting.

Verdict: This is music for listeners who like their beauty slow, their collaboration deep, and their metaphors wrapped in silence. A record that doesn’t show off, but rewards repeated viewings - or listenings - like a canvas that only reveals its real image under moonlight.

The new release by Stefano De Ponti is another confirmation of his inclination towards the form of radio drama as this piece is a sonic collage of bits and pieces from movies or theatre and it's presented as a way to represent the state of entropy generated by the passing of time which makes all things equal under the dust.
The Domenico's monologue from Nostalghia opens the first side of the tape and introduces the "abstract" part where guitar, noises and resonances generates un interlude to another movie dialogue where one of the character talks about his music as empty and inexistent but this is instead, if not music, sound in one of his finest form. The first part of the second side of the tape is focused around guitar sound in his most hypnotic and, if possible, jazz oriented form when insert of piano and clarinet emerge from the context; when the voice of Domenico returns another voice declare "the music doesn't work" and start the most drone oriented and abstract part of the tape which has the role to conduct the listener to the desire to hear the tape again when the silence generates the void.
Even in an established and codified form, the Author is able to instill his personalities and erase all influences from the listener perspective and confirm himself as one of the key figure of the scene. Highly recommended.